Snare 13.8
Snare 13.8 is the ninth chapter of Snare. The city's villain alliance attack the Nine. The Undersiders and The Travelers launch a rescue attempt to save Grue and are in turn captured by Bonesaw alongside Imp. Plot The Undersiders and Travelers make their way to Dolltown in the back of three vans. Skitter voices concerns about the potential chaos Trickster's plan involves, and notices how stressed out everyone is. She feels tired despite the building adrenaline, due to the minimal sleep she had the previous night, and she cannot remember the last time she got more than five hours sleep. Once the vans have parked and the groups disembarked, Tattletale asks Regent about his control over Shatterbird. Regent explains that the non-physical nature of the power makes it tricky to handle and Shatterbird's fury at being controlled is causing his control to slip, but he believes he should be fine if he's close to her. Tattletale points out the building she believes the Nine currently are inside. Skitter scouts the building with bugs and discovers the Nine has a large group of hostages, but Trickster advocates for avoiding the risk of alerting the Nine, prioritising saving Grue and themselves. Nobody speaks in Skitter's support and Trickster warns her that if things are messed up by saving the hostages then the fault is all on her. Tattletale interrupts to point out the arrival of Hookwolf's alliance. The plan of the Undersiders and Travelers is to have Genesis take a form resembling Crawler, with Jack and Bonesaw on his back, and use Shatterbird and Genesis to draw the fighting away from the building the Nine are in. This prevents Purity leveling the building, which would put Grue at risk, but will draw the Nine out to fight Hookwolf's group. Shatterbird and Genesis gain the attention of the villain alliance and Skitter begins evacuating civilians from the area. She locates the Nine, but they are standing by the window and merely observing the fighting, remaining in the area of the hostages. At Skitter's request, Regent manages to move Shatterbird into a position where Purity's attacks on her strike the Nine's building. This prompts the Nine to release the hostages out of the front of the building, revealing that Bonesaw has modified each of them to vaguely resemble a member of the Nine, acting as crude decoys. With the exception of Bonesaw, the real members of the Nine follow the decoys out to begin fighting the assembled villans. Despite Bonesaw's position, Tattletale makes the call to act and Trickster swaps a group of people on the top floor with himself, Skitter, Tattletale, Sundancer and Ballistic. Skitter quickly determines that the only place in the building Grue can be that her bugs woul not have found him is in the walk in freezer. After Tattletale verifies it is not trapped, she opens it. Inside the freezer, Grue has been hung up on the far wall in a state that clearly indicates Bonesaw and Mannequin have experimented on him. The skin on his arms and legs has been removed, his ribcage has been opened and the organs have been displayed around the room. A variety of fluids are being pumped into his body to keep him alive. Skitter takes a step into the freezer, but Grue seizes up and Tattletale hauls Skitter back, pointing out that artificially grown nerves have been spread across the floor and linked to Grue. Ballistic offers to put Grue out of his misery, but Skitter refuses to give up until they at least tried to coerce Bonesaw into fixing him. With her bugs, Skitter is able to observe the fighting outside, feeling a cold, numb anger. In another room the team finds Bonesaw, but when Tattletale cries out a warning the Bonesaw turns to reveal it is a decoy. Other than Skitter, the members of the group all fall to the floor. Bonesaw emerges from the inside of a covering of dead flesh that she had been using to imitate a corpse and complains about Skitter not going down despite the three darts Bonesaw had fired at her. Bonesaw explains that Skitter's teammates have been paralysed, expressing her intent to work on them and talks about her attempts to get Grue to use his power so she can study it. Skitter accidentally lets Brian's name slip as she demands Bonesaw fixes him. Bonesaw refuses to 'censor her art', so Skitter charges at her with a swarm and her weapons. The bugs alert her to Bonesaw's use of a handful of paralysing powder, blown at Skitter's face, just in time for Skitter to avoid it. Recovering from her lunge away, Skitter is tackled by mechanical spiders. As four spiders hold her down, Bonesaw blows the powder into her face and Skitter eventualy has to breath in, instantly feeling her muscles seize up, a growing headache and loss of her precision with her power. Bonesaw drags Skitter and her teammates over towards the freezer and stacks them up like logs, and Skitter realises upon seeing Imp's mask below her that Imp has also been caught by Bonesaw. Characters Site Navigation Category:Chapters